


Truth is Straight as an Arrow

by Kaerra



Series: Those Who Drabble In The Dark Collection [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: And so is Annette, F/M, Felix is oblivious... till he's not, Fluff and Humor, Mercedes is amused, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25330402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaerra/pseuds/Kaerra
Summary: During the first full month back at the monastery, Felix’s gesture of kindness when Annette gets cold leads to a revelation he’s unprepared for. A fic based around an amazing fanart! (With a side dose of Mischievous Mercedes and a silly argument for the ages.)
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: Those Who Drabble In The Dark Collection [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756777
Comments: 26
Kudos: 88
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	Truth is Straight as an Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> This fic wouldn’t exist without the [amazing art by the fabulous Nerv](https://twitter.com/nervmaid/status/1277497027312717824), who graciously gave permission for me to write the story I pictured around this piece. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Nerv! It was my choice for the drabble prompt of writing a piece inspired by FETH artwork, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity!
> 
> The title is taken from this quote: “Truth is as straight as an arrow, while a lie swivels all over the place.” ― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

It was during the first week of Guardian Moon when Felix Hugo Fraldarius’s heart betrayed him.

The morning had been innocuous enough: minuscule breakfast portions, followed by more cleaning of the monastery grounds and buildings after five years of neglect (and months of filthy, stinky bandits making use of the facilities). After their reunion a few weeks before, Felix and his former classmates had found themselves faced with multiple tasks of a herculean nature—resurrecting Garreg Mach as a base of operations, and trying to resurrect His Beastliness into some semblance of a leader. Of the two areas, Felix had far more confidence in making an impact in the former.

So, he’d put his head down and gone to work alongside the others, doing whatever task was needed. This week, he’d spent most of his time cleaning out the training grounds with anyone motivated towards making them functional—usually Caspar, Ferdinand, and Catherine.

By the time Felix and Caspar had left the training grounds for lunch, Felix had worked up more of an appetite than could be sated by the meager helping of soup and a few small baked potatoes. Food was more scarce here than even at the front lines in Fraldarius territory. Something had to be done about it soon, before they all sniped at each other from hunger and exhaustion; which his friends had embarked upon since he’d sat down.

“I’m telling you, we need to make an effort to buy supplies at the nearest town,” Sylvain said over a mouthful of bread, across the table.

Ingrid, who sat on Felix’s right, shook her head. Her short blond hair swished against her jawline.

“And how far away is the nearest town that could afford to sell us enough food to feed everyone? They can barely feed themselves.”

She looked forlornly at her empty plate, cleaned of even the last crumbs, and sighed.

“Face it, Sylvain, we’re going to have to hunt and forage for food.”

Sylvain leaned back and stretched his arms behind his head. “The only hunting I do is for the smiles of beautiful women.”

Felix could feel the chill from Ingrid’s posture even sitting six inches apart.

“You’re going to act like a cad now, of all times? We’re perfectly capable of going out and trapping some game or digging up wild parsnips.” She clutched at her stomach when it rumbled loudly, as if to punctuate her point. “At this rate, I’d eat a monstrous wolf on sight.”

Sylvain smirked and dropped his arms. “With that look in your eye, the monster would probably turn tail and run before we could attack it.”

“Ugh, you’re impossible!”

Desperate to get away from another pointless argument that his friends would likely pull him into before long, Felix rose and took his plate and bowl to the kitchen staff. Tersely thanking them for the meal, he turned and nearly walked straight into Mercedes.

“Oh Felix, I have a favor to ask of you,” she said. “That is, if you’re not terribly busy?”

“What do you need?”

He’d barely kept the surprise out of his voice. Outside of war council meetings, he rarely saw any of the former Academy women except in the dining hall. He wasn’t usually the person they went to for help, not with a gentle giant like Raphael around.

“We’ve been clearing away rubble surrounding the greenhouse all morning, and we’ve finally gotten to some larger pieces that are too heavy to move,” Mercedes said, waving an apologetic hand in the air. “Would it be too much of a bother to ask for your help?”

“That sounds more like something Raphael could do better,” he said.

“Of course you’re right, Felix, but I believe he’s moving a lot of large pieces out of the cathedral. And Sylvain is…” she looked over at where he was still arguing with Ingrid.

Felix followed her gaze, and avoided the urge to roll his eyes at his friends’ antics.

“I see your point. Sure, I can help you.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” Mercedes clapped her hands in delight. “I don’t think it will take that long.”

She led him outside through the entrance on the fish pond side, and down the stairs towards the greenhouse. Felix spied Annette without her normal orange cape, working several feet in front of the building filling several buckets with smaller rocks and gravel. That’s whom Mercedes meant by “we.”

She seemed oblivious to their approach, and was singing a tune he didn’t recognize. A snatch of lyrics carried across the open space.

“So many rocks to move, my poor back I’ll need to soothe.”

For some reason, the idea of Annette relaxing in the sauna—the normal location for loosening sore, tired muscles—made Felix feel like he’d just spent all day in the damn place fully dressed. He looked away, taking stock of what they’d left for him to carry: about ten large pieces scattered around the greenhouse’s entrance. The building itself was miraculously undamaged, given all of the glass panes.

When they pulled up in front of Annette, she was on her feet, hands clasped in front of her, and an indecipherable expression on her face. Her cheeks were rosy from the chill in the air, and Felix felt his innards twist, like he’d just taken a punch to the gut. What in the goddess’s great sky was wrong with him today?

“Oh, Felix! Did you just hear—I mean, are you here to help us?”

“Yeah,” he said, uncertain what else to add.

Annette’s enthusiasm wasn’t dampened by his lackluster response. She clapped her hands together, and flashed a wide smile.

“Thank you so much!” she said. “We’ve just gotten to the larger boulders and I think there’s even a cannon ball somewhere… Anyway, if you could just load those into the cart by the greenhouse door, it would help a ton!”

Felix nodded and headed to the greenhouse’s entrance, where the bulk of larger rubble was located. Behind him, Annette and Mercedes went back to clearing the smaller rocks, exchanging the occasional words. He moved about half of the large pieces easily, till he found himself frowning down at an awkwardly long boulder that was too bulky to manage without a second pair of hands. Not for the first time, Felix wished the boar wasn’t out of his mind; his strength was especially useful in situations like this.

He heard the crackle of footsteps over gravel and lifted his head to see Mercedes approaching.

“Oh dear, that boulder looks very heavy,” she said. “Perhaps I could try to help you?”

Felix gave her a level look. “As long as you don’t hurt yourself. Manuela would never let me hear the end of it.”

She chuckled, and walked to the other side of the boulder.

“Don’t worry, Mercie isn’t clumsy like I am!” Annette said, catching his eye. “I’ve already been banned from helping move anything heavy.”

Mercedes looked at her friend, and her face softened. “For everyone’s safety, of course.”

Annette laughed again, and her breath formed a cloud in the air. Felix couldn’t help but notice her shivering when she bent down to resume work—his battle-ready senses always detected the slightest motions, even in non-fighting situations. Hopefully the work would warm her up; the tremors in her shoulders were distracting.

Mercedes discreetly cleared her throat and Felix returned his attention to the task at hand. They moved the largest boulder without mishap, and resumed to their separate tasks. For a while, they worked in silence, aside from Annette’s absent-minded humming. Out of the corner of his eye, Felix noted that Annette had placed her gloves off to the side, presumably to keep from wrecking them by the dirty nature of the work. Didn’t she own a sensible pair? Between that and the lack of a reasonable winter cloak, no wonder she was freezing.

Before his mind had a chance to protest, Felix pulled his hooded cape over his head, leaving him clad in his asymmetrical blue tunic and black wool turtleneck—more than warm enough. Ignoring the panicked inner voice demanding an explanation, he crossed the short distance between him and Annette.

“Here.” He thrust the cape at her like it was a dead animal.

Annette’s confused blue eyes met his; she looked as dumbfounded as he felt.

“Take it, you’re clearly cold,” he said.

Hesitantly, she reached out and accepted the offering.

“Um, thank you!” she said, her cheeks matching the redness of her hands. “Won’t you need it, though?”

“I’m fine. Just put it on.”

He turned around and walked back to his previous spot, figuring that was the most decisive way to get Annette to stop prevaricating. Behind him, Mercedes gently chided her.

“Felix is right, Annie. You’ve been outside for hours and haven’t gotten much to eat all day. I’ll go brew us some warm tea in the dining hall when we’re finished.”

Felix bent over a broken piece of flagstone, and his gaze cut upwards, towards Annette, who’d finally put the garment on. His cape was so long on her, it was practically a calf-length cloak. It struck him how small Annette was, considering her out-sized personality. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, and he wondered why the extra exertion had caused it to speed up so suddenly.

Ten minutes later, he’d moved the last piece of rubble when voices raised in disagreement broke through his concentration. Sylvain and Ingrid had arrived, and—after first greeting the two women—headed straight for him.

“Felix, there you are!” Ingrid said. “I know you’ll agree with me on this.”

“Sly tactics from the woman who claims she’s never sneaky and manipulative—nice one there, Ingrid,” Sylvain said, his face ostensibly amused, although Felix detected the annoyance beneath.

If he’d had any hope of avoiding playing intermediary between them, that was now dashed.

“Are you still going on about how to provision the monastery?” he asked, cutting Ingrid off mid-protest. “Don’t you both have actual work to do?”

“This is important, Felix!” Ingrid said, crossing her arms. “If Sylvain would stop being so lazy, we could have already found Shamir and Leonie and taken some horses out for a hunting party.”

“Hey, I’m not saying you can’t go find them and do your own thing,” Sylvain protested. “I think it’s a waste of time when we could trade for food at the nearest village.”

“You’re just trying to get out of joining us.”

Felix opened his mouth to suggest they both act on their convictions and leave him the hell alone, but they talked right over him like he wasn’t there. He crossed his arms, lips set in a thin line of disapproval, and tuned them out.

Mercedes and Annette stood together watching the spectacle, trying not to laugh and failing. Mercedes said something Felix couldn’t hear, and Annette grinned in response. Then she lifted the hood of his cape over her head, and snuggled into it, with a satisfied look on her face.

Felix felt like he’d been shot through the heart.

Apparently the shock of spiritual death resulted in a rush of bizarre imaginings—the way she’d look wearing the colors of House Fraldarius on a regular basis; and him replacing his cape with his arms and holding her close, feeling her cuddle up against him for warmth. His body flooded with heat at the realization of how much he suddenly wanted both of those things, right now.

In that moment, there was no way to dodge the arrowhead of epiphany: Felix Hugo Fraldarius had fallen for Annette Fantine Dominic.

So he did the only thing he could, before anyone looked at his face and read the depth of shock and naked yearning.

He walked away.

* * *

Annette gaped when Felix walked between his two arguing friends and left, without an acknowledgment or even a backwards glance. It was so startling, Sylvain and Ingrid had lapsed into stunned silence. What had they said to set him off like that?

“Well then,” Sylvain said. “Haven’t seen him do that in a while.”

“Seriously,” Ingrid agreed. “I guess some things don’t change.”

Shaking their heads, they waved goodbye to Annette and Mercedes and left as quickly as they’d appeared, disagreement magically resolved.

Annette and Mercedes exchanged raised brows, then giggled at the other’s expression.

“Wow, they must have really upset Felix to make him leave,” Annette said, looking in the direction he’d gone, towards the training grounds. “Mercie, why are you laughing?”

Several seconds passed before her friend could speak, and then Annette wished she hadn’t.

“My dearest Annie, sometimes you are denser than my mother’s sponge cake.”

“What do you mean?” Annette asked, utterly baffled. “Oh no! Felix’s cape—I’m still wearing it! I’d better go return it.”

She turned to leave, but Mercedes gently laid a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sure he’ll come back if he needs it,” she said. “After all, you were so cold before.”

Annette nodded, and clutched the hood tighter around her head, inhaling deeply. The scents of pine, leather, and an irresistible musky smell swarmed her senses. It was like Felix himself, that combination, and it struck Annette that wearing his cape like this was almost like being embraced by the living man.

Blood rushed to her cheeks at the idea of that degree of intimacy—not that he saw her as anything more than clumsy Annette with the silly song lyrics. Her heart was more foolish than the dumbest heroine in a chivalric tale.

“How about we break for tea now?” Mercie’s voice broke through the fog of embarrassment. “I hid some extra rolls from this morning.”

“Good idea!” Annette said, a little too loudly.

She’d give Felix back his cape later. This was the closest she’d ever get to him, and her inner romantic wanted to indulge every second she had.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/Kaerra3)


End file.
